The hatred of artistic England for the Academy proceeds from the
knowledge that the Academy is no true centre of art, but a mere
commercial enterprise protected and subventioned by Government. In
recent years every shred of disguise has been cast off, and it has
become patent to every one that the Academy is conducted on as purely
commercial principles as any shop in the Tottenham Court Road. For it
is impossible to suppose that Mr. Orchardson and Mr. Watts do not know
that Mr. Leader's landscapes are like tea-trays, that Mr. Dicksee's
figures are like bon-bon boxes, and that Mr. Herkomer's portraits are
like German cigars. But apparently the R.A.'s are merely concerned to
follow the market, and they elect the men whose pictures sell best in
the City. City men buy the productions of Mr. Herkomer, Mr. Dicksee,
Mr. Leader, and Mr. Goodall. Little harm would be done to art if the
money thus expended meant no more than filling stockbrokers'
drawing-rooms with bad pictures, but the uncontrolled exercise of the
stockbroker's taste in art means the election of a vast number of
painters to the Academy, and election to the Academy means certain
affixes, R.A. and A., and these signs are meant to direct opinion.

For when the ordinary visitor thinks a picture very bad, and finds
R.A. or A. after the painter's name, he concludes that he must be
mistaken, and so a false standard of art is created in the public
mind. But though Mr. Orchardson, Sir John Millais, Sir Frederick
Leighton, and Mr. Watts have voted for the City merchants' nominees,
it would be a mistake to suppose that they did not know for whom they
should have voted. It is to be questioned if there be an R. A. now
alive who would dare to deny that Mr. Whistler is a very great
painter. It was easy to say he was not in the old days when, under the
protection of Mr. Ruskin, the R.A.s went in a body and gave evidence
against him. But now even Mr. Jones, R.A., would not venture to repeat